Top 12 Most Memorable Encounters

Coming off a spectacularly lucky (photographically) year, 2017 was a no good, awful, downright miserable stretch of bad luck. Though we spent more time in the field than ever, we captured content only about 10% of the time we set out to look for wildlife. Yet for all the bad luck, we had some incredible moments – and, based on our last two forays into the Rockies, our luck also seems to be changing. Here’s hoping 2018 is the best year yet.

Fisher

A winter trip to Riding Mountain National Park was for the purpose of finding a lynx and though we had a distant sighting, that goal was, for the most part, a major flop. But in our endless pursuit to document wild cat behaviour, we stumbled across something even more special: A fisher. The bigger-than-a-marten, smaller-than-a-wolverine member of the weasel family is one of the hardest to spot creatures in the North American wilderness. Simon had only one previous sighting and Jill had never seen one, so both of us were caught off guard when Jill yelled: “It’s a marten…wait, no…it’s a fisher!” We very well may never see another one in our lifetime, but if this was our only encounter, it was one for the ages. The size, speed, strength and sound of the large mustelid will stick with us and hardly a day goes by without us replaying the moment in our heads.